Light emitting diodes (LEDs) are an important class of solid-state devices that convert electric energy to light. Improvements in these devices have resulted in their use in light fixtures designed to replace conventional incandescent and fluorescent light sources. The LEDs have significantly longer lifetimes and, in some cases, significantly higher efficiency for converting electric energy to light.
For the purposes of this discussion, an LED can be viewed as having three layers, the active layer sandwiched between two other layers. The active layer emits light when holes and electrons from the outer layers combine in the active layer. The holes and electrons are generated by passing a current through the LED. The LED is powered through an electrode that overlies the top layer and a contact that provides an electrical connection to the bottom layer.
The cost of LEDs and the power conversion efficiency are important factors in determining the rate at which this new technology will replace conventional light sources and be utilized in high power applications. The conversion efficiency of an LED is defined to be the ratio of optical power emitted by the LED to the electrical power dissipated. Electrical power that is not converted to light that leaves the LED is converted to heat that raises the temperature of the LED. Heat dissipation often places a limit on the power level at which an LED operates.
The efficiency of conversion of electricity to light depends on the quantum efficiency that depends on the material system in which the LED is constructed, and also on the extraneous resistive losses. For GaN-based LEDs, the p-type layer that overlies the active layer has a very high electrical resistivity. This is also the top layer through which light exits in many designs. Consequently, a transparent conductive layer such as Indium Tin Oxide (ITO) is used to spread the current laterally across the chip and the sheet resistance of this ITO layer is chosen to be comparable to that of the n-type GaN layer underneath the active layers. For large area power chips, to further reduce the electrical resistance, metal electrode fingers are used both on the ITO layer as well as in trenches etched down to expose the n-GaN layer. These metal electrodes being opaque must be made as narrow as possible to minimize blockage of light but this increases the resistance per unit length for a given metal thickness. Thus for a given electrode width, the thickness of the electrode metal must be increased for higher current operation if the voltage drop across the length of the electrodes is to be kept constant and at a minimum.
In addition, the efficiency with which the active layer converts power to light also decreases with current density beyond some point depending on the specific design and quality of the active region layers. Accordingly, the amount of light per unit area of an LED reaches a practical limit. To provide higher light output once this limit is reached, the area of the LED must be increased. However, to provide adequate current spreading over the top surface of the LED, there is a limit to the size of an LED that can be powered from a single contact on the top surface of the LED. When the light is extracted through the top surface of the LED, a transparent conducting layer (such as ITO) is deposited over the top layer for reasons explained earlier. While this material has significantly less resistivity than the underlying GaN, the resistivity of the layer is still significant. In principle, the resistive losses in the ITO layer could be overcome by using thicker layers of ITO; however, ITO is only partially “transparent” with non-negligible absorption in the blue, and hence there is a practical limit to the thickness of the ITO layer. In practice, additional metal contacts are provided on the ITO layer to help with the current spreading; however, such contacts are opaque, and hence, reduce the light output.
As a result of the various tradeoffs between current spreading and absorption of light in the materials over the p-type layer, there is a practical limit to the size of a single LED. Hence, light sources that require more light output than can be provided by a single LED must be constructed from multiple smaller LEDs. To minimize cost, the multiple LEDs are constructed on the same die and are powered from common terminals on that die. Such light sources are sometimes referred to as segmented LEDs. Each segment, however, can be viewed as a single LED that is connected to the other LEDs on the die.
In prior art light sources of this design, the individual segments are connected in parallel. This leads to a number of problems. First, the maximum voltage that can be applied to the light source is determined by the maximum voltage a single LED can withstand, typically a few volts. As a result, the power supply that powers the light source must provide a very high current at a low voltage. This leads to further power losses in the conductors between the power supply and the light source. In addition, the brightness of the individual LEDs can vary over the light source due to processing variations across the die that cause variations in the resistance presented between the two contacts that power each LED.